rom cafeterias to cocktail parties to
the pages of important magazines and journals, few groups of
friends have argued ideas so passionately and so publicly as
the writers and critics known as the New York Intellectuals.
Rising from America's working class they went on to wield great
influence in the second half of the twentieth century. ARGUING
THE WORLD is the portrait of four members of this group: Irving
Kristol, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer. It is the
story of a lifelong political argument among brilliant and engaging
individuals who came of age as radicals at the City College of
New York during the Great Depression and then journeyed across
the political spectrum.

racing their rise to prominence as political
and cultural critics in post-war America through magazines and
journals like Partisan Review and Commentary the film charts
their path through the controversies of the Cold War and Joe
McCarthy's reign of terror, their clash with the tidal forces
of the New Left on college campuses in the 60s, and the fights
which pulled them apart in the midst of the conservative backlash
hailed by Ronald Reagan's presidency in the eighties.Driven apart
by their responses to these historical events, by the nineties
the four found themselves at odds with one another. Irving Kristol
became influential in America's resurgent conservative movement,
Nathan Glazer, a forceful critic of liberal social policy, while
Daniel Bell fought to defend a besieged liberalism. Until his
death in 1993, Irving Howe, ever on the political margins, endured
as a key voice of the radical Left.

eaving personal reminiscence, location
photography, archival footage, images of New York and the voices
of friends and critics, ARGUING THE WORLD explores the passions,
the issues and the era that shaped these men.